The Milk of Birds

by Sylvia Whitman

  I help my mother and Zeinab with the jerry cans. Outside the shelter my mother stirs the fire, and I put Muhammad in Zeinab’s lap so I may cut vegetables for the mulah. My mother has heard in the water line that another section has begun to make K. C.’s stoves, and we are talking when the flap of the shelter falls back and Adeeba steps out. She leaves for the latrine.

  When she returns, I stand and hold out the knife. “You are always complaining about my cooking, City Girl,” I say. “Show us what you can do.”

  For a moment Adeeba shifts on her feet before me. I know that stance, for I have seen it in sheep pawing the ground outside the zariba, making up their minds whether to enter the enclosure or bolt. Muhammad and I gave them time to choose obedience, although when they bolted, we always chased them down, as they expected and perhaps even wanted us to do. I am not going to let Adeeba run away.

  She takes the knife.

  My mother and I continue our talk, which is a corral around our family. When Hassan arrives, he cries, “Adeeba!” with such surprise and delight that Muhammad peddles his legs and Zeinab laughs. Hassan cannot wait to show Adeeba what he has learned in his first week of school, for Si-Ahmad has persuaded his uncle to send him from the market to the late afternoon session of class. Soon Adeeba is scolding and correcting his writing.

  At dusk, Khalid rides by. Seeing Adeeba, he lays his bike in the sand and asks my mother’s permission to join us.

  “I am glad you feel better,” he says to Adeeba. “Now we must eat our watermelon, if it has not spoiled.”

  My mother hands him the knife, but he gives it to Adeeba. Hassan rolls the melon in front of her. She raises the knife and swings it down with a chop, and the melon splits.

  My mother takes over the slicing.

  “I am sorry,” Adeeba says quietly to me.

  “The bottle is neither broken nor its honey spilled,” I say.

  We eat the whole melon, juice running down our arms.

  Dear Nawra,

  I’m supposed to do everything the way I write letters—in chunks. That’s some of the big advice to come out of Dr. Redding’s office. “Divide and conquer your tasks!” I bet Mom’s thrilled she spent two thousand dollars for that.

  At home Mom read the report about a hundred times, including aloud to me, like a report card. At least there’s one line that cheers me up a little: “Most kids learn to think in really narrow ways. K. C.’s gift is that she thinks outside the box.”

  Mom made a copy of the report for Dad. She paper-clipped a brochure to it: “Are Learning Disabilities Hereditary?”

  Sometimes. The “manifestations” sure fit Dad. He’s always flipping channels—and not just on the TV. He did not appreciate the brochure, however. Or the fact that Mom said, “No charge,” when she handed it to him.

  Oh God, Nawra,

  I just got your letter. Did something happen while Adeeba was gathering wood? Emily thinks so. Don’t blame yourself. It’s the raper’s fault, not the rapee’s. It’s not your fault you weren’t there. Whoever did it is the sicko. That’s the first thing they teach you in self-defense class. Whatever you do to survive is the right thing.

  Just watch out for HIV, Emily says. You too. There are really good drugs now. You’ve got to insist. ZDV. Not just one drug, but a mix—a cocktail, which sounds funny because here that means an alcoholic drink or canned little cubes of pears and peaches with one measly cherry that get us through the winter. Emily says that AIDS treatment in Africa has improved big-time. It used to be, people said, “What do Africans need expensive drugs for when they’ve got so many other problems, like bad water and not enough food? So what does it matter that millions die? Aren’t there too many people anyway?” I know it sounds cruel and probably racist, but doctors thought that poor people couldn’t take the drugs in the right order at the right time, which could cause a mutation problem because HIV is a virus. If it gets a poke instead of a punch in the head, it actually builds up resistance. But Emily says now people know that Africans will take drugs like anyone else, and they work.

  Mrs. Clay says she’ll pay for ZDV treatment if there’s any way.

  More later.

  Nawra

  NOVEMBER 2008

  At the end of the lesson, a child tugs on my tobe. Hassan.

  “Where is Tata Adeeba?” he asks.

  “In her class,” I say. “Next door. You are sweating.”

  “I ran,” he says. “I am supposed to bring Adeeba to the clinic. Khawaja are looking for her. The nurse saw me and sent me to find Adeeba.”

  Adeeba is erasing a word with her foot. “Better,” she says. “Try again.” She watches as the boy writes on the ground with his stick.

  “Excellent,” she says. The boy stands and bows, turning with a grin as wide as a wadi. In many things my friend is generous, but not in her compliments.

  As we walk to the clinic, Adeeba asks Hassan questions about the khawaja who sent him. Since he cannot answer, she turns to ones from school. “How many continents move on the surface of the earth? What are their resources?” I marvel as I have many times that when you pass time in the company of one who is rich, it does not relieve your poverty, but when you pass time with one who is learned, it cannot help but reduce your ignorance.

  The khawaja are the Healer of All Nations. When they see us, they smile.

  I cannot hold my words. “You have brought pills so my friend will not get the wasting disease!”

  Then they fold up their smiles and put them in their pockets. “Pills will do no good now,” the man says through their translator. They talk about numbers and tests on monkeys and mice. “If we find out months from now that your friend is sick, we will bring her medicine,” the man says.

  “We did not forget you,” the woman says.

  They tell us about committees that collect stories. At first the government did not let them into Sudan, so they interviewed people in camps across the border in Chad. But now the pressure of the world is so great, it has pushed open a door into Darfur.

  “The documentation team will be here in a few days,” the man say. “Will you tell your stories?”

  I do not want to talk to a committee. I do not think a committee is as great a thing as medicine.

  Even Adeeba does not say yes.

  Through their translator, the man tells us about South Africa, where black people suffered because white people stole their lands and made them work and threw them in jail when they protested injustice. But black people did not stop fighting, and the world started watching. Finally an election came, and the black people stood in long lines and cast their vote and made an ex-prisoner their president.

  Yet people could not just forget the many wrongs done. Leaders feared this pain would bring vengeance and then only violence and ruin. For there to be reconciliation, the president had said, there must first be truth. Those hurt must share their pain, and those who did the hurting must listen and confess.

  “If nakedness promises you a piece of cloth, ask him his name,” I whisper to Adeeba.

  “Who will listen if we speak?” my friend asks.

  “The committee,” the woman says.

  “Remember what the nurse said,” I whisper. “No woman is safe before a judge.”

  “Who is this committee?” Adeeba asks.

  “People who care about human rights,” the woman says. “Some Sudanese and some from the West.”

  “He who tells you about others will tell others about you,” I whisper.

  “The committee will make a document,” the woman says. “Then people who care about what is happening in Darfur will read your words. Sudan is not yet committed to reconciliation. But truth is a first step.”

  My friend considers their words.

  “Wherever you trust, you need to fear,” I remind Adeeba. “Do not do this thing for other people.”

  “If a dog bites you and you don’t bite back, it will say you have no teeth,” Adeeba says. “That is what my father always said. I w
ill testify.”

  To me she says, “I need you to stand by my side, even if you choose not to speak.”

  The doctors pull out their smiles again.

  K.C.

  NOVEMBER 2008

  “No shots,” I say.

  “No shots,” says Dr. McCreary. Do all psychiatrists nod at their patients? In the waiting room, I kept looking around for the crazy people until I realized, Hey, that’s me.

  Dr. McCreary nods as she reads Dr. Redding’s report. She actually nods all the time. I think she has a nerve disease. Does she burn more calories?

  I change the wallpaper several times on Mom’s phone. Finally Dr. McCreary looks up.

  “Attention deficit disorder isn’t easy to diagnose,” she begins.

  Yet it looks like I’m going to hang up the ADHD skirt and sweater set in my closet.

  Still nodding, Dr. McCreary talks up drugs. Now Mom is nodding too. ADHD drugs stimulate the brain, even though my brain is supposedly already overstimulated. They have side effects, though, like headaches or an extra helping of anxiety. Or appetite suppression.

  “They make you thin?”

  Dr. McCreary gives me a nodding owlish look. I wonder if she’s taking any drugs for whatever is going on with her brain. She’s a shrink who’s shrunk. She’s shorter than Granny, and almost as old, though maybe it’s just the wrinkles. They scream, Too much gardening in the sun!

  “Are you concerned about your weight?” she asks.

  “No more than every other teenage girl in America.” I know what she’s driving at. “No way am I taking pills,” I say.

  She and Mom back off. Dr. McCreary launches into the wonders of exercise, which boosts endorphins, dopamine—all these chemicals you’d make a fortune from if you could pack them into a pill. But then Americans would take the pill and skip the gym, and we’d be even fatter than we are already.

  “I love running! But Mom doesn’t let me,” I say.

  Mom gets all defensive: Sports are good, but she’s trying to diminish distractions, blah, blah.

  Dr. McCreary nods. Maybe she owes her great reputation in our HMO to her bobble-head.

  “What do you think, K. C.?” she asks.

  “Track has an indoor season in the winter,” I say.

  • • •

  I win! I’m going to try sprints instead of drugs. At least for now.

  Next we’re going to talk to the special ed coordinator at WJLL about accommodations.

  “Deluxe accommodations? I can get a personal assistant to take algebra for me?” I ask Mom in the car.

  “Smart aleck,” Mom says.

  Nawra

  NOVEMBER 2008

  On the day of the committee, Adeeba asks my mother if she will join us, but she shakes her head. Zeinab is coming. Wherever Muhammad goes, she follows.

  As we leave, my mother says to me, “A bald-headed man is not afraid of lice.”

  As we walk toward the shelter of the khawaja, I puzzle over my mother’s meaning. A saying takes meaning from its speaker as well as its words. From my father, this might have been a warning. Yet my mother has never called me spoiled meat. She does not speak of my son’s origin, but she does not make up lies to hide it. Perhaps she is telling me that I have already felt my full measure of shame. I am bald. Now I should not be afraid to speak of it.

  Outside the shelter, we join a few other women sitting silent on the ground.

  Adeeba says, “You are the real story of Darfur, not I, some city girl who got lost on the way to her grandmother’s village.”

  “Complaining to anyone other than God is humiliation,” I say.

  “Whoever forgets his past goes astray,” Adeeba answers.

  “That is not the past I wish to remember,” I say.

  “You cannot choose your past,” Adeeba says, “only your future. You must do this for your son.”

  We do not wait long before a Sudanese woman calls for Adeeba. I do not know what I expected, but something more. I have been thinking of stories of kings with their many tents and cloths with gold threads and guards at the door with sharp spears. Yet here six people sit at a long table in an empty room. They introduce themselves. The two khawaja men are lawyers. One of the Sudanese is a translator, another a secretary with a writing machine. An old woman doctor says her name slowly and seriously as befits her age. Only the young woman smiles at us; she, too, is a lawyer. They look as if they have slept on a bed of rocks.

  Adeeba sits on a chair in front of the table. I am so proud of my friend. She tells things in their order, first the trouble in El-Geneina and then her flight and then what she has heard in the camp. Sometimes the committee stops her to ask a question. “You saw the scars? What was the woman’s name and her village?”

  Adeeba cries only once, as she talks about her father. The young lawyer stops and talks with the khawaja in English. The translator says they know many lawyers in Sudan, and one will try to find out what has happened to Adeeba’s father.

  My friend tells of the men who abused her while she was gathering wood.

  The old doctor asks about the camp clinic. Then she points at Zeinab, sitting beside me on the ground. “Is that the child violated with you?”

  She uses the harsh words as if she says them every day.

  “Does she wish to speak?” the doctor asks.

  Zeinab does not answer.

  “She is too young,” the doctor says to the woman lawyer.

  “They all are,” the lawyer says.

  Slowly, like the first wisp of smoke from a fire, Zeinab’s hand rises above her head.

  A khawaja speaks. “Let the record show the witness raised her hand, indicating yes,” the translator says.

  Zeinab puts down her hand, but still she does not look up.

  “Is it true what Adeeba reported about the burning of your village?”

  This time Zeinab raises her hand more quickly. Again and again, the hand goes up, gaining strength as it reaches.

  The committee thanks her. Like K. C.’s mother, I squeeze the hand that has spoken well. The committee stirs and thanks Adeeba, too.

  From her chair by the door the woman who brought us in says, “Your next witness is here.” She points at me.

  I tremble like a person with fever. Adeeba reaches for Muhammad, but I hold him tight.

  “Speak for your son,” Adeeba whispers. “Truth is like a shadow. It cannot be buried.”

  Dear Nawra,

  The Darfur Club is growing. Word’s out that we have good snacks, but also we do interesting stuff. Every meeting the news committee gives us an update on what’s happening in Darfur. Can you guess Emily’s the chair of that? I’m the activity person.

  Mr. Nguyen suggested we have a map activity. He was thinking pencil and paper, write in country names, and I was thinking, I wish I could blow up map quizzes. Then it hit me: Blow up the map! Emily was ready to call Homeland Security, but then I explained: not with dynamite, with people.

  Mr. Nguyen was highly dubious, but Parker said I was a genius. We got permission to use the multipurpose room. Parker helped me find a good map of Africa, and we upped the scale so each inch equaled two feet. At our meeting, we marked out the border of Sudan with masking tape on the floor. We unrolled blue crepe paper for the Blue Nile and white crepe paper for the White Nile and stacked cardboard boxes for mountains, like Jebel Marra, right in the middle of Darfur. I didn’t know it was an old volcano.

  We appointed people to be surrounding countries. Todd climbed up on the stage and took a picture. I hope it survives the mailing. Egypt—that’s Parker and Gregory under the toilet paper as mummies. Todd’s friend Alfredo is holding the sign for Kenya. Shaddy and his sister Biruk equal Ethiopia and Eritrea. Nathan in the turban is Mad-Eye Mu’ammar Gadhafi in Libya, and Milton “the Roach” Stanley represents the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Why is he holding a caterpillar? you might ask. He found a survey that said 70 percent of people there eat caterpillars, ground up as flour.

  I
n Sudan, Chloe and Florinda and Rebecca are wearing the multicolored tobes—“My best sheets!” Mom wailed, but I returned them unharmed. Recognize Emily in the peacekeeperish blue beret? We made Mr. Nguyen into Khartoum, because he’s what Parker calls a “capital fellow.” I’m in the crown where the rivers meet—Queen of DeNial, get it?

  WJLL uploaded the picture onto the school’s website! Mr. Nguyen was so impressed that he said he might try a human map in one of his classes—“on a smaller scale.” He said our map was “a little too rowdy” for a classroom.

  More later.

  Nawra

  NOVEMBER 2008

  How long have I been talking? Hours, it seems.

  “They wore uniforms the color of sand,” I tell the committee. We were all that was left of Umm Jamila. We greeted them with silence, which was our only weapon. They mocked our skinny legs and gritty hair.

  “When you bomb a village, one said, the cockroaches escape.” They laughed.

  Enemies gloating over your grief is harder to bear than the agony of death.

  Another said, “The only way to kill a cockroach is with your shoe.”

  He lifted his gun and shot my uncle Fareed, and Musa, the last of our grown men. He shot Shaykha and Hari. When my aunt screamed, he aimed right inside her open mouth. “A gun works too,” he said as he pulled the trigger.

  “A shoe you can wear again,” said another. “Save your bullets.”

  They told us to move, beating our backs with the barrels of their guns. We were only nine then, my mother and I, Ishmael, Umm Amin, Umm Bashir, Nima and her baby Daoud, and Fatuma and Lamia, sisters. My mother was slow to stand because of the baby in her lap, so the man grabbed Ishmael by the legs. Ishmael cried and my mother yelled, “No!” But the man swung the baby so that his head struck the ground. The man swung again and again until Ishmael’s body went limp, and the man dropped him.